Preston Martin figured the retro blue Volkswagen van he slept in for a year during college was a goner, given that he parked it in a Malibu neighborhood just before the Palisades fire ripped through, reducing homes and cars to rubble and charred metal.
So the surfboard maker was stunned to find that the vehicle survived.
Not only that, a photo of the vibrant bus taken by an Associated Press photographer was circulating widely on television and online, giving viewers a measure of joy, NBC reported.
"There is magic in that van," Martin, 24, said Tuesday in an interview with AP. "It makes no sense why this happened. It should have been toasted, but here we are."
The neighborhood remains closed to the public, and neither Martin nor the friend and business partner to whom he sold the van last summer, Megan Krystle Weinraub, have been able to inspect the vehicle. In other photos of the van, it appears to have soot on its windows, Martin said.
Martin purchased the 1977 Volkswagen Type 2 somewhat on a whim sometime around his junior year studying mechanical engineering at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
